


Adventures in Snow Dynamics and Knot Theory

by binz, shiplizard



Category: Gunnerkrigg Court
Genre: Engineers, F/F, Female Relationships, Knitting, Snowball Fight, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie and Kat do things (not THINGS) involving snow, and yarn, together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adventures in Snow Dynamics and Knot Theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [auctorial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auctorial/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Based loosely on the Winter 2012 wallpaper here: http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/support/

Annie’s cheeks are almost as red as her hair, and her eyes sparkle like the snow. Or the snow before they got to it, at least, trampling it down and rolling it up and flinging it at each other for the past hour or so. The court is a grey shadow in the distance, but around them it’s nothing but a field of freshly fallen white, bare trees draped in icicles and glittering in the sun, and the cold blue sky.

“One more branch,” Annie says, brandishing a twig and stabbing it deep into the side of the large snow-Mort she and Kat spent the better part of the last hour rolling up and shaping. “There!” she says, and Kat beams back at Mort and his large, snowy doppelganger. “What do you think?”

“Perfect, Annie!” Mort says, and spins a happy circle. “~~Whoooooooooo~~!” he adds, and turns into a snow-tentacle monster.

“Like looking in a mirror, isn’t it, Mort?” Kat says. “Super scary!”

Kat’s jeans are starting to soak through, going stiff and icy, but she couldn’t care less, laughing as Shadow flings an armful of snow in the air, getting himself with more of it than Robot, who ducks and weaves out of the way. 

“Shadow!” she shouts, and scoops up a mitten-full of snow to pack into a tight ball, sending it flying through the air and ducking low and flinging herself behind the snow-Mort. “Watch out!”

There’s a moment of silence, and Kat doesn’t dare peek to see what’s happened. There’s no way she actually hit Robot, but there’s no _noise_ , and she can’t bear not knowing... She holds her breath and peeks, and shrieks, the snowball whizzing by her head, two more thumping against snow-Mort.

Then Annie shouts, half laughter, half war cry, and there’s that lightning fast brush of ozone and ears popping from the wrong side feeling that means Annie’s done something with her blinker stone, and there’s a roar like the ocean against cliffs, and snow flies up like its falling in reverse.

“Wow,” Kat says, once it’s gone silent, peering out from behind the snow-Mort. “Good shot, Annie.” 

She can’t see Shadow or Robot at all, just lumpy piles of white everywhere, Mort floating above it all, Renard sniffing curiously at some of the drifts. And then one stirs, and a metal arm shoots out, bending and reaching into the snow beside itself, and emerges again, pulling up Shadow by the hood. 

“Wheeeeeee!” Shadow says, dangling from Robot’s grip, and then Robot’s second arm appears, whirring like a blender, and Annie yelps, flinging herself away from the rain of snowballs.

“Here!” Kat yells, “down here!” and grabs at Annie’s coat as she springs past, giggling madly and pulling Annie down into her arms. 

Annie gasps, crouching low and wrapping around Kat, both of them squishing together as snowball after snowball thumps against the snow-Mort, sailing over their heads and past their sides. Annie snickers and curls closer, Kat’s nose pressing against her neck, and Kat wraps her arms tight around Annie’s back. They laugh themselves out, close and flushed, and Kat realizes her jeans are soaked, drenched from where her boots start to where they disappear under her jacket, and that they’re both covered with snow, and she can’t feel her right leg at all. 

“You’re shivering,” Annie says, voice close, mouth pressed against Kat’s ear. “We should go in.”

Kat pulls back, her mitts sticking to Annie’s wool coat, blinking at the bright light. “You’ve got snow in your hair.”

“You too.”

It’s true, and Kat brushes it away, taking Annie’s hand when she offers, and Annie pulls her to her feet.

There’s no fresh hail of snowballs, and still not when Kat peeks out around the rather mangled remains of snow-Mort.

“Oh no,” she says, glad at least that they had hidden under Mort’s face. “We can fix this,” she tells Mort, when he pops out in front of her. 

“It’s okay!” he says, and appears a camouflage combat helmet on his head. “He’s a soldier!”

“I have to go meet Jones,” Annie says, brushing the snow from her jacket. “Robot, Shadow?”

“We’re okay, Annie!” Shadow says, waving from up in a tree, tucked into Robot’s lap. 

Kat waves goodbye, yelping when a snowball bounces off her head, and races forward past Annie and Renard, and is still out of breath and laughing when they reach the court.

* * *

Annie’s not back yet, and Kat keeps glancing at the clock and then back down at her notes. She has ideas for a new robot made to tie knots, which probably has a lot to do with the way she’s been trying to learn how to knit and not doing very well. 

It was kind of a silly idea, but it gives her something to do with her fidgety hands when she can’t occupy them otherwise, and when she hit on the idea of making a scarf for Annie she resolved that she wouldn’t give it up until she had it figured out. 

She actually likes it, although she gets bored easily unless she tries new patterns. Her stitches are sometimes too loose or too tight, but under them the mathematical precision of loops and knots and tensions is ordered and well defined. She dropped a stitch two rows ago and it shows, a wider hole in the stitching, but that’s interesting too, seeing how an interruption changes the final pattern of yarn according to the rules of knots (even if it means she may have to start over on Annie’s scarf). 

She needs to look at a book on knot theory; pure math has never been as fun to her as servos and carefully locking parts but it’s fun _knowing_ things and being able to symbolize them, and the under-over-interlock could hold patterns, she could knit a circuit board scarf for herself...

She imagines a less practical pattern that she isn’t good enough to knit yet. A Coyote that stretches all the way down the scarf, or forest vines. She imagines how Annie would smile and how proudly she’d wear it. This scarf won’t be as cool, but it will be warm around Annie’s neck and she can tuck it into her coat or toss the ends over her shoulder. 

It would be cold and her cheeks would be as red as her hair, and Kat would want to shove her nose against the flushed skin like she did this afternoon.

Knitting is also good because she can let her fingers keep going even when her head locks up, gears not meshing, thoughts not flowing. 

She’s a little upset, really, about the whole thing. Not upset at Annie, not even much at Jack or anyone else who’s made sly comments or assumed too much or too little, but mostly because... 

There’s so much homework, so much to learn. It isn’t fair to have to untangle this, too, and sort it out. She just wants to go on, being happy and being Annie’s friend and wanting to tuck warm things around her and touch her cheeks and not have to project this complicated system far into the future at all. 

She reaches the end of the row, swaps the needles in her hands-- still hasn’t figured out an efficient, graceful way to do that, not sure how she would implement it in a specialized knitting-knot-tying-robot either. 

Knitting is a Girl Thing, she knows. Boys do it, but then they’re being special. Being a little in, a little really really caring about, whatever, you know, another girl can be a Girl Thing, too, but it’s a different class of Girl Thing and it’s all pretty stupid and complicated. She just wants to do what she’s good at and work harder at things she’s bad at, and she wants to do it with Annie. 

Her fingers keep moving even as her thoughts sort of stop. That’s-- maybe that’s what she should work on. Doing Things with Annie. Not THINGS things. Just, whatever they’re doing, it should mostly be together. Maybe forever? She can’t imagine wanting to stop being around Annie. They should talk about it, if Annie would like to do whatever things Annie wants to do With Kat, forever. If she has-- if she knows where she WANTS to be, she’s pretty good at designing a way to get there. 

If she wants to make Annie a scarf, she can learn to do that. And if she wants to make Annie a scarf with colorful patterns and stitches mostly the same size and no holes, she can design a robot that can do that. So... it will be okay. 

She could encode the words into the stitches, knit for 1 and perl for 0, but Annie wouldn’t notice, probably. They’ll have to talk about it. 

There are slow steps leading up to the room, the light barely-there ones that she’s come to associate with Annie since she got back from the forest. Kat looks up with a smile as the door opens, but Annie isn’t smiling, her face serious or sad. Sometimes it can be hard to tell. Not like Kat. Everyone has always been able to tell with Kat.

“What did Jones want?” 

“We talked some more about history and the court, and her history with the court.” 

“Yeah?” Kat encourages, but Annie just frowns and looks around the room as if she’s looking for answers.

“Jones is... complicated,” she says, and her voice is careful and graceful but also frustrated and a little lost. She flops down in her chair and looks pensive. “...What are you doing?” 

“Knitting,” Kat says instantly. 

“Tell me about it?” Annie says, with an interest she only shows in Kat’s more complicated work when she needs a distraction, and Kat is happy to give her one. 

“Oh, it’s nothing. I picked it up from Margo. I made the needles in the lab, we had hollow aluminum just lying around. And the yarn is from Eglamore.” 

“What is it going to be?” Annie looks dubious. 

“It’s a scarf,” Kat says proudly. “It’s for you.” 

“For me?” Annie’s face softens. “Oh, but I could get a scarf, you don’t have to do that.” 

“It’s no problem,” Kat says. 

“Will it be done soon?” Annie really does sound eager, even though the dropped stitches show. 

“You’ve got to be patient!” Kat tells her. “It’ll take a while.” 

Lots of things do. They don’t have to talk about it today, it isn’t a good day to talk about it; Annie already has a lot on her mind. So they’re going to just keep doing all the things they have to do, together.


End file.
